Home Improvement is a sitcom on television starring Tim Allen that ran on ABC from September 17, 1991 to May 25, 1999, for a total of 204 half-hour episodes over eight seasons.
Matt Williams, Carmen Finestra, and David McFadzean created the series, which, although not being a favorite among critics, was one of the most watched sitcoms in the United States during the 1990s, receiving numerous honors. The series also established stand-up comedian Allen’s acting career and earned more than $500 million in syndication earnings by 1996.
Show background Home Improvement (TV series)
Based on Tim Allen’s stand-up humor, Home Improvement premiered on ABC on September 17, 1991, and remained one of the highest-rated sitcoms for nearly a decade. It reached No. 2 in the ratings during the 1993-1994 season, the same year Allen had the No. 1 book (Don’t Stand Too Close to a Naked Man) and picture (The Santa Clause).
Beginning in season 2, Home Improvement began each episode with a cold open that included the show’s logo as a teaser. From season 4 till the series’ conclusion in 1999, an anthropomorphic variation of the logo was utilized in various sorts of animation.
Home Improvement (TV series) Episodes
| Season | Episodes | First Aired | Last Aired | Rank | Viewers (millions) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 24 | September 17, 1991 | May 5, 1992 | 4 | 28.9 |
| 2 | 25 | September 16, 1992 | May 19, 1993 | 3 | 31.5 |
| 3 | 25 | September 15, 1993 | May 25, 1994 | 2 | 35.2 |
| 4 | 26 | September 20, 1994 | May 23, 1995 | 3 | 32.9 |
| 5 | 26 | September 19, 1995 | May 21, 1996 | 7 | 25.9 |
| 6 | 25 | September 17, 1996 | May 20, 1997 | 9 | 23.1 |
| 7 | 25 | September 23, 1997 | May 19, 1998 | 10 | 19.5 |
| 8 | 28 | September 22, 1998 | May 25, 1999 | 10 | 17.7 |
Home Improvement Plot details and storylines
Taylor Family
The Taylor family, which includes Tim (Tim Allen), his wife Jill (Patricia Richardson), and their three sons Brad (Zachery Ty Bryan), Randy (Jonathan Taylor Thomas), and Mark (Taran Noah Smith), is the focus of the series.
The Taylors live in suburban Detroit, and they have a neighbor named Wilson (Earl Hindman), who is frequently the go-to guy for the Taylors’ troubles.
Tim enjoys power tools, vehicles, and sports. Tim, an enthusiastic admirer of Detroit’s professional sports teams, frequently wears Lions, Pistons, Red Wings, and Tigers clothes, and many stories revolve around the clubs.
He is a former salesman for the fictional Binford Tool firm who is brash, overambitious, and prone to accidents.
Tim is witty but flippant, and he makes a lot of inappropriate jokes, much to his wife’s dismay. However, Tim can be serious when necessary.
Jill, Tim’s wife, is kind and sophisticated, yet she also makes bad decisions. In subsequent seasons, she goes back to college to study psychology.
The Taylors’ family life is noisy, with the two oldest children, Brad and Randy, taunting the much younger Mark while constantly testing and harassing one another.
Such play occurred primarily during the first three seasons, and it was only seldom repeated until Jonathan Taylor Thomas left at the start of the eighth season.
Brad and Mark grew closer during the show’s final season since Randy was absent.
Brad, who was popular and athletic, was frequently the driving force, acting before thinking, which placed him in hot water.
Andy, a year younger, was the group’s comedian, noted for his quick wit and sharp tongue. He had more common sense than Brad, but he was no stranger to problems.
Mark was a mama’s boy at first, but by the seventh season, he had evolved into a teenage misfit clothed in black. Meanwhile, Brad developed an interest in cars, much like his father, and began playing soccer.
Randy joined the school drama club, then the school newspaper, before leaving for Costa Rica in the seventh season.
In the early seasons, Wilson was often seen standing on the other side of Tim’s backyard fence as the two talked, generally offering wise advise as Tim struggled with his difficulties.
In following seasons, a running joke emerged in which increasingly ingenious methods were utilized to keep Wilson’s face below the eyes from ever being seen by the audience.
In subsequent seasons, Wilson’s full name was revealed to be Wilson W. Wilson Jr.
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Tool Time
Each episode features Tim’s own Binford-sponsored home improvement show, Tool Time, which is a show-within-a-show.
Tim hosts this show with his friend and mild-mannered co-host Al Borland (Richard Karn) and a “Tool Time girl”—first Lisa (Pamela Anderson) and subsequently Heidi (Debbe Dunning).
whose primary responsibility is to introduce the couple at the start of the show with the phrase “Does everybody know what time it is?”
Despite being proved to be an amazing salesman and TV personality, Tim is a notoriously accident-prone handyman, frequently causing enormous disasters on and off the set, much to the dismay of his coworkers and family.
Many Tool Time fans believe that the show’s incidents are staged on purpose to emphasize the repercussions of wrong tool use.
Many of Tim’s accidents are caused by his devices being utilized in an unusual or overpowered manner, in order to demonstrate his motto “More power!”
This popular catchphrase was not uttered after the seventh season of Home Improvement[6] until Tim’s last sentence in the series finale—the last two words ever spoken on the show.
Tool Time was created as a satire of the PBS home remodeling show This Old House.
Tim and Al are caricatures of This Old House’s main cast members, host Bob Vila and master carpenter Norm Abram.
Al has a beard and always wears plaid shirts while filming an episode, mirroring Norm Abram’s appearance on This Old House.
Bob Vila was a guest star on multiple episodes of Home Improvement, and Tim Allen and Pamela Anderson starred on Bob Vila’s show Home Again.
The Tool Time theme music, a saxophone-dominated instrumental rock song from the early 1960s, was occasionally utilized as the ending theme music for Home Improvement, particularly when blooper clips from a Tool Time segment were shown behind the credits.
